Weekly book shelf 10/15, Halloween

I've been falling behind in book reviews, so this weekend I caught back up with some back posting, in case anyone was interested in books about dinosaurs or yet more books on evolution. But with Halloween coming up I thought I'd share some of our favorite All Hallow's Eve stories around here.

Want to know about the origins of this spooky holiday? Halloween by Alice K. Flanagan will answer that and many questions about this favored children's holiday. This is just one in a series of holiday books by the same author, but I think it's the best of the bunch. It's not a chapter book, but information is broken down in to sections, one or two spreads per time period or location and belief. Some traditions are religious in nature while others are more secular, but the book (the whole series, actually) has a notably Christian leaning. It's because of this book that we always eat an Irish meal when we carve pumpkins at our house!

Like all the early books in the Franklin series, Franklin's Halloween by Paulette Bourgeios is an endearing story with enjoyable illustrations. Franklin and his friends are getting ready for the big Halloween party, and after hemming and hawing a bit Franklin finally comes up with a great costume idea. They are all really excited. But when the party comes around Bear is stuck at home with a cold. The other friends have a great time at the party, especially getting spooked in the haunted house, and at the end of the evening they pool their candy and take a share to Bear. Sweet and entirely lacking inauthentic, forced conflict.

A little old lady is on her way home when she gets spooked by a pair of shoes chasing after her! Next it's shoes and pants, then a shirt, too, and so on. She is very brave, and when she finally gets safely home she announces that she was not scared! so what does the apparition do? It sulks, and she feels sorry enough for it to make it her scarecrow. We have the book and audio version The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything, by Megan Lloyd, and while the book is cute all on its own, the real trick is in the reading out loud.

A Visit to the Haunted House by Dean Walley is an out of print pop-up book that I swear melds the Wizard of Oz movie with the Electric Company TV show. A pair of kids goes into a house that is known to be haunted and are scared out of their wits by strange happenings. Turns out it's just the man behind the curtain. When they figure that out, and he is appropriates remorseful, they invite their friends to make a Halloween happening out of it. Calvin loves it because it's a pop-up book.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving with the 1928 illustrations of Arthur Rackham is a classic of classics. The eight full page color plates and several smaller pencil sketches are fun to enjoy, and the story in its entire and original form is quite possibly the best ghost story of all time. For anyone who doesn't know it, Ichabod is the new school teacher in Sleepy Hollow. Not dashing or brave he's rather unremarkable, but he falls in love with a beautiful girl who is sought after by another more dashing bachelor in town, Brom Bones. Unwilling to be daunted Ichabod pursues the girl, even while being harassed by Bones. One night he disappears, and the legendary headless horseman is believed to be the culprit. Or was it Brom Bones after all? No one will ever know. Aside from the mysterious ending, there are plenty of other spooky references, such as goblins, haunts, and witches, all throughout the book, and the sketches especially due justice to these.

Gris Grimly's illustrated version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving is another fun way to read this old tale. In graphic novel version the emphasis is on the sketches while the text is broken up and abridged, but the story is still fun, and the images add their own special touch. This one is visually spooky while Rackham's obviously leaves the emphasis on the original text.

Both Grimly and Rackham also published illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, but while Sleepy Hollow is already pushing the envelope on age appropriateness (though Calvin really loved both of these versions and can't get enough of them), I think the Poe works are right off the scale for us yet. Maybe next year, though, because I really do love Poe.

Journal entries—Activities activites

We've barely been home at all in the past week, and I'm obviously having trouble keeping up here. Three journal entries a week, but do I have time to post them here? I should. I've started posting them along with my own blog entries in the journal, but for those who visit only this page, here is some of what we've been up to.

Weekly book shelf 10/8, Dinosaurs

We've now moved from the Paleozoic Era to the Mesozoic Era where our focus has been on dinosaurs and their rise to world domination and power. Intense, huh? Even more fun, though, is to take note of the little mammals waiting in the wings.

Dinosaurs Magic Tree House Research Guide and Dinosaurs Before Dark were of course favorites this week. Calvin is fond of the Magic Tree House series, and I think they make good supplements, especially the fiction books. Toned down more than most, the research guide is still a bit of a mess with varied fonts and some pages scattered with information and images. The illustrations are a bit cartoony, but still, the information is presented in a clear and readable way aimed at young children without talking down to them.

Dinosaurs Eye Openers by Angela Royston is definitely for a younger reader than the rest of the books here, but Calvin still enjoyed it. This is basically a dinosaur fact book highlighting eight different well-known species, like stegasaurus and triceratops. One dinosaur per two page spread with a paragraph of information in a relatively large font size, one main large picture of either a dino recreation or a skeleton, and a number of smaller sketches. The best part about this book is its simplicity, especially for young kids.

The Usborne Discovery: Dinosaurs book is a standard Usborne internet linked reference book. It's a bit jumbled and a little hot with a variety of images and image sizes on each page, and the information is presented not in paragraph or essay form but in short captions or blips. Some images are photos of dinosaure replicas, others are illustrations. Some spreads are about dinosaurs in general while others focus on specific species. We didn't use this one very much, and I didn't check out the interenet links at all, but Calvin enjoyed flipping through it.

Eyewitness Books: Dinosaur is a standard DK Eyewitness book with way too much going on. Lots of images and short blips or captions, but the information lacks a clear path and is presented in a hot or haphazzard manner. Still I find these books good for flipping through from time to time because the pictures can be fascinating.

The Great Prehistoric Search is a really fun search and find book with facts thrown in. Like Where's Waldo only much easier, each two page spread is a detailed and beautiful illustration with a list of things to look for or find. Each beautiful scene is created with creatures from a single time and location, and those creatures are listed along the sides with small images and a sentence of description or a fact about. The scenes actually start back in the Cambrian Period, and end in the Pleistocene Epoch. The first few pages are infomraton on evolution and the timeline, though they aren't particularly informative. The images are wonderful and the searches are fun, though not overly challenging. This is a big hit with Calvin.

Who was Charles Darwin? (review by Calvin)

This book is one in a series about historical figures. Calvin read it to me so I can throw in a bit of review along with his. The book is written with youth in mind—it's a bit lengthier and more complex than the Magic Tree House books, but not by much. I found the sentences varied enough to be enjoyable while still being readable for the younger set, and the pencil sketch illustrations were a nice touch without being distracting. We had a great time with the book and used it to map the voyage of the Beagle on our wall map.

Weekly book shelf, 10/2—more on evolution

We are still looking at evolution this week as we work our way through the Paleozoic Era towards the Mesozoic and its dinosaurs.

Who Was Charles Darwin?, by Deborah Hopkinson, is a short chapter book telling the life story of Charles Darwin. About half the book is devoted to his voyage on the Beagle, but there is a short chapter on his childhood and several chapters about his life following the voyage, including mentions of his wife and children, his illness, and the political and cultural climate in which he was writing his On the Origin of Species. The language is little more complex than in the Magic Tree House series, but it's pretty close to that level, and the pencil sketches are interesting enough to add to the book while not being a total distraction. Calvin read this one to himself, and again out loud to me, so I know he really enjoyed it.

Born With a Bang and From Lava to Life by Jennifer Morgan are is the first two in a series of three books about our world. The language in these books is lyrical, almost mystic, and the illustrations are vivid and capturing. They are dealing in science, but the tell it like a story. Calvin really loves them. My only disappointment is in the page layouts: one full page of beautiful picture facing a page full of text, but multiple font sizes and colors are used, something that I always find distracting. It's a small issue, though, and not much of one at that. There is a timeline at the top of every page and a more succinct run down of timeline facts in the back of the book.

Voyages Through Time: The Beginning by Peter Ackroyd is a book I think we'll be using a lot through our study of evolution and prehistory. This is definitely more of a reference book, broken into chapters based on time periods and eras. The images are large and enjoyable without being distracting the book is pleasantly devoid of varied font sizes, colors, and presentations—it's simply written as a reference book, full of well presented facts, and images with descriptive captions. The chapters are well developed but in some cases lack the dimension that would allow them all to be interconnected, but I didn't find this to be a huge issue since we were using less as a reading book and more like a reference book.